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Ungaro: Mode as Media Maelstrom

Talk about fashion pandemonium. There was a veritable human maelstrom backstage after the latest runway show of Ungaro in Paris on Sunday, Oct. 4, as camera crews pushed and shoved and begged for an interview with the house’s new celebrity creative director Lindsay Lohan, making her debut as a designer.

Lohan took her bow, fighting back tears, hand in hand with her joint creative director Estrella Archs of Spain, pausing at the head of the catwalk as the crowd of some 250 photographers snapped the movie star, dressed in a skimpy one-shoulder white crepe cocktail dress.

“Fashion debuts are so much more fun than red carpet premieres,” said Lohan in her private backstage area, as she instructed her hair and makeup team to “quickly comb my hair. It looks disgusting.”

Though fashion critics, editors and stylists put celebrities on their magazine covers and pen features about their tastes, the industry has remained highly suspicious of their attempts to reinvent themselves as designers. So, the weight of expectations were against the new duo as the lights dimmed in the Carrousel du Louvre and the first looks in the Spring 2010 collection hit the pink trimmed white catwalk.

First of all the good news: Archs clearly knows how to cut a cocktail dress, and she and Lohan did get the color scheme right – deep purples, hot pinks and silvery whites. Plus, there was an easy-to-understand feeling to a lot of the looks, twisted and ruched cocktail dresses that had a movie star quotient and a French quality. And the choice of Art Deco heeled shoes all looked like potential hits.

“It’s about a woman being in love with herself," said Archs. "It's about being self-confident and feeling good about being beautiful,”

However, this collection never really soared. While it had enough of the house’s signatures, it felt more like a diffusion line than a major signature collection. Going young is one thing, but somewhat lacking in ambition is another. And, where the house was famed for its kaleidoscope of colors and tie-dyed fantasies, this was too retrained with its preference for scratchy, scrawled prints.

Moreover, too many of the styling tricks did not come off. Covering the chest with sequined hearts is one thing, but placing the same thing on a half dozen heads was naff. And on three occasions straps fell off shoulders, or breasts suddenly swung out from tuxedo jackets, which was a little unlucky, but did not look very professional.

However, since the departure of Giambattista Valli, the acclaimed first successor of founder Emanuel Ungaro, the house’s three intervening designers, Vincent Darre, Peter Dundas and Esteban Cortazar, all had less than stellar debuts. So, while not exactly a home run, Lohan and Archs did get the collection to first base, defying the odds.

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